Russian space agency says cosmodrome damaged after joint launch with US

Authorities accidental the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russia’s lone motorboat tract for crewed abstraction missions, volition beryllium restored ‘very soon’.

A Russian motorboat tract successful Kazakhstan was damaged during a spacecraft motorboat carrying Russian and American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), Moscow’s abstraction bureau Roscosmos has said.

The associated Russian-US Soyuz MS-28 mission, carrying Roscosmos astronauts Sergey Mikaev and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and NASA astronaut Chris Williams, took disconnected from the Baikonur Cosmodrome astatine 12:28pm Moscow clip (09:27 GMT) connected Thursday.

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The spacecraft successfully docked aboriginal that day, the ISS announced successful a societal media post, and the unit was connected committee the presumption successful bully health.

But aft inspecting the Baikonur Cosmodrome pursuing the launch, Russia’s authorities abstraction bureau confirmed that “damage to a fig of elements of the launchpad” had been detected.

“An appraisal of the authorities of the motorboat analyzable is being conducted now,” Roscosmos said.

“All the indispensable reserve elements are determination to reconstruct it and the harm volition beryllium eliminated precise soon,” it said.

Russian abstraction bloggers, however, person claimed that the harm to the Baikonur Cosmodrome – Russia’s lone motorboat tract for crewed missions, located successful the Russian-leased metropolis of Baikonur successful Kazakhstan – is much terrible than authorities are claiming.

.@NASA astronaut @Astro_ChrisW and his 2 Roscosmos crewmates opened the Soyuz MS-28 hatch astatine 10:16am ET connected Thanksgiving Day and joined Exp 73 crew. https://t.co/NQ7pUizkO2

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) November 27, 2025

Immediately aft the greeting launch, Russian rocket motorboat expert Georgy Trishkin claimed that “the work compartment [had] collapsed” and portion of the structures had fallen connected launchpad 31, causing superior harm that could suspend operations for immoderate time.

Russian abstraction writer Vitaly Egorov besides drew attraction to disposable harm astatine the motorboat tract that could beryllium seen during the authoritative broadcast.

“In the state exhaust tray nether the launchpad, determination was immoderate monolithic metallic operation that should not person been there,” helium said.

Egorov added that if the Baikonur Cosmodrome is disabled arsenic suspected, Russia volition person “lost the quality to motorboat radical into space” for the archetypal clip since 1961.

The Soyuz unit is scheduled to walk 242 days astatine the ISS, returning to Earth successful July 2026. Some 40 technological experiments and 2 extravehicular activities volition beryllium conducted implicit the people of the eight-month mission.

Russia’s abstraction programme, erstwhile a root of nationalist pride, has suffered from years of chronic underfunding and corruption scandals.

Despite an astir implicit breakdown successful relations betwixt Moscow and Washington implicit the warfare successful Ukraine, abstraction continues to beryllium 1 of the fewer remaining areas of US-Russia cooperation.

But contempt continued cooperation, the US and different Western countries person ceased different partnerships with Roscosmos arsenic portion of the slew of sanctions placed connected Russia owed to the war.